The RAF has launched its first drone strikes against Islamic fundamentalists ISIS, marking an escalation of Blighty's air war in Iraq.
A British Reaper drone attacked a terrorist encampment near Bayji, north of Baghdad, where militants were planting improvised explosive devices.
It then circled the area, providing real-time …

The Royal Air Force is chuffed this week to announce the graduation of its first class of "remotely piloted air system pilots", who have the job of piloting aircraft they are not actually in.
'Differ only slightly' from the normal ones. Visually, anyway
As regular readers of these pages will know, the RAF (with some …

Aviation history is being made in Lincolnshire today as the only two airworthy Avro Lancasters in the world met up at RAF Coningsby this afternoon.
The two World War II bombers – one operated by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (CWHM), the other by the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) – are due to rendezvous …

The RAF has blown up two apparently abandoned Libyan tanks using a Eurofighter Typhoon jet in a move which appears to have been motivated more by Whitehall infighting than by any attempt to battle the forces of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The following video was released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) yesterday afternoon, less …

Information stolen from the RAF last September included detailed information on the private lives of senior staff, including drug abuse, problems with alcohol and extra-marital affairs, it has been revealed.
The unencrypted hard drives were stolen from a base in Gloucestershire in September last year. At the time we were told it …

The Labour government has announced significant changes at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), whose effect will be to put more resources into the Afghan war while nonetheless cutting spending overall - largely by reductions to parts of the RAF not engaged in the fighting. However, there is also a major reshuffle of helicopters among …

Yesterday, reporting on the Ministry of Defence green paper issued this week, we referenced a news item in which the UK's top serviceman, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, reportedly said it was "plausible" that Britain might in future have just two armed services rather than three.
It has now emerged that this was in error. …

The RAF was left eggfaced in recent weeks as its entire force of fighters - nowadays made up of new and horrifyingly expensive Eurofighter "Typhoons" - was grounded following discovery of faults in their ejector seats. The grounding was particularly embarrassing as it came into force on Battle of Britain Day, the 70th …

Wing Commander Ken Wallis, who soared to international fame at the controls of James Bond's Little Nellie, has died at the age of 97.
The former RAF Wellington bomber pilot passed away at his home in Norfolk on Sunday, the end of an illustrious career which saw him set the 3km speed record for autogyros (207.7km/h), and - most …

Personal details of potentially all current and ex-RAF personnel and dependents were stored on three USB-connected storage drives which went missing from a Ministry of Defence establishment at Innsworth, Gloucestershire.
Both the MoD police and Gloucester Police are investigating a presumed theft. A statement from the MoD said …

The Royal Air Force is suing a high-street shopping chain for violating its intellectual property rights. A range of duvets and other bedroom stuff marketed at young boys feature red-white-and-blue roundels, and this has Her Majesty's flyboys up in arms (as it were).
Various UK media report that the Ministry of Defence has …

A senior RAF officer has stated unequivocally that the British government considers itself under no obligation to buy any more Eurofighter/Typhoon jet fighters. The statement would seem to confirm that no more will in fact be bought: but the taxpayer may yet spend billions more on upgrading the existing RAF fleet.
Eurofighter …

A peer and former defence minister has described the A400M military transport plane - which is being bought by the cash-strapped UK armed forces for a secret but outrageous amount of money - as a "Euro-wanking make-work project" in the written Parliamentary record.
Airbus President and CEO Tom Enders and the A400M Programme …

RAF personnel, frustrated with having their pay messed up by a new computer system, can relax after seven weeks of errors and uncertainty.
The Ministry of Defence is expected to announce later today that its stalled RAF administration system is finally running along nicely, allowing personnel to "self-service" their own human …

Obituary
Tony Benn, the modernising Labour MP who tried to pit British technology against US giants has died at the age of 88.
It was Benn, a minister in two Labour governments during the 1960s and 1970s, who created ICL (International Computers Limited) to take on the growing might of IBM. It was mainframes at dawn in the post-war …

Analysis
Last week, the Defence Secretary announced the publication of the Levene report into the way the UK Ministry of Defence is run: and Dr Fox stated that he agrees with all the recommendations it makes. The MoD has formally announced that it "will publish a blueprint setting out all the major changes the Department is embarked on …

The head of the Royal Air Force (RAF) has said the UK should have a manned space programme, and that his organisation should provide astronauts.
Flight International reports that Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy expressed his views at a big dinner in London this week. The good marshal apparently felt that the lure of …

Comment
Another doleful milestone for British taxpayers and servicemen today, as the A400M military transport plane takes to the air for its first test flight. The A400M - a decade late and massively overbudget - continues to drain the UK's defence coffers though better alternatives are readily available: meanwhile our fighting troops …

Geek's Guide to Britain
He learned to fly aged 22, set up his first aircraft factory aged 24 and by 30 his fighters dominated the skies over the Western Front.
Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith - later, Sir – founded the Sopwith Aircraft Company in 1912, turning out aeroplanes from a Edwardian roller-skating rink in Kingston upon Thames. Yes, the …

Vulture in the Air
Stepping up from our usual car reviews, we’ve got an aeroplane this weekend. The guest pilot is Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, who runs the Fear of Landing website.
What’s it like flying a Tiger Moth? Absolutely AMAZING! I don’t think I can do the experience justice, but I have to try.
You can imagine my excitement when Into the Blue …

The UK's Ministry of Defence was obliged to reset user names and passwords following the publication of pictures of the Duke of Cambridge at work on a military base.
Four of the 10 pictures, released by St James's Palace, showed Prince William at work at RAF Valley but failed to blur or disguise sensitive information in …

Analysis
The most expensive aircraft ever built for the British armed forces, a painstakingly-restored De Havilland Comet airliner outfitted as an anti-submarine patrol plane, has made its first flight.
The Nimrod MRA4 on the ground. Credit: BAE Systems The 1940s* aeroplane that WOULD NOT DIE.
The Nimrod MRA4 programme was initiated …

Newly-promoted RAF sergeants are being forced to buy their stripes on eBay after a cost-cutting "bungle" left the proud NCOs without a proper supply of the essential badge of rank, the Sun reports.
One chap from RAF Valley in Anglesey apparently shelled out £4.99 to a private seller because there were no stripes available in …

A UK defence initiative hopes to link up military flight simulators in the US and UK , allowing British pilots to train for complex multi-aircraft missions together with their American counterparts across the pond.
Front line aircrew are now involved in the experimental phase of the £7.8m Mission Training through Distributed …

The UK's plan to build new aircraft carriers remains under threat, and ongoing attempts by the RAF to shut down the Harrier jumpjet force - eviscerating the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm - have yet to be resolved. However, the RN has managed to manoeuvre a Defence minister into endorsing the view that Britain has needed proper …

Two RAF fighters last Friday intercepted a Manchester-bound Boeing 747 after it failed to respond to air traffic controllers, the BBC reports. Pakistan Airlines flight PK 709 - carrying 81 passengers plus crew - should have made contact with controllers as it entered UK airspace. Air traffic controllers in Maastricht lost touch …

Opinion
In a bizarre repeat of history, reports have it that the Royal Air Force is once again seeking to take over the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy - a sure sign that the economy really is in desperate trouble. Just as it has meant more than once in the past, a successful RAF bid to grab a greater share of the taxes in tough …

Geek's Guide to Britain
During the Cold War, Neatishead in Norfolk was theoretically the worst place in the UK to live: the nearby RAF base would be target Number One if the Russians nuked us.
This was brought home to me in a guided tour by a retired officer, whose old job was to run Blighty’s air defence. Standing in the 1980s-era Cold War control …

Exclusive
RAF personnel have spent the last six weeks pulling their hair out over problems with pay and benefits brought about by the bodged implementation of an EDS computer system. Since it went live at the end of March, thousands have been on the receiving end of processing errors in the payroll system.
Instigated by the Armed Forces …

A nobleman among geeks, the great stargazer Patrick Moore passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Born in 1923, the great man racked up many geek accolades in his long career of star watching, contributing to the NASA moon landings and holding the world record for the longest running TV show with the same presenter for his 55 …

A two hour RAF rescue operation in the Portsmouth area earlier this month finally traced the source of a distress call to a "faulty" digital TV set-top box. Suspicious? We should be - this may be our final opportunity to frustrate a Lizard Planet battlefleet timed to arrive for the terrestrial TV switch-off in 2012.
Think about …

Geek's Guide to Britain
Big data? Pah. Arthur is big hardware. He weighs in at 1,118 tonnes, has a diameter of 25.9 metres and is 52 years old. From his home, a high plateau on Cornwall’s remote Lizard peninsula – as far south as you can go on the island of Great Britain without falling off – he has played his part in Space Age history, appropriate …

In a serious blow to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, the Ministry of Defence has moved to prevent the tyrant whining about low-flying RAF aircraft.
We understand that over the weekend the dictator attempted to complain that Brit flyboys were putting a real downer on his day, but this is what happened when he tried to input the details …

An RAF Tornado which was struck by a US Patriot missile while returning from a sortie over Iraq last year was downed by a 'system error', UK defence minister Ivor Caplin has admitted.
In a written statement, Caplin said that there were several contributory factors which led to the deaths of crewmen Flt Lt Kevin Main and Flt Lt …

Geek's Guide to Britain
Which country is credited with designing more than half of the world’s most important inventions. Is it Germany, home of the VW? Japan, birthplace of the Walkman? The US, land of NASA and Google? No: Britain.
Scientists, engineers, architects and inventors in Britain have made their mark on the world with trains, jet engines, …

We're delighted to report that the RAF have shown Russian donkey dangler Vasily Gorobets - the man responsible for the Sea of Azov airborne ass - just how it's really done.
Gorobets defiantly laughed in the face of international outrage at his asinine parasailing stunt, and declared: "I'm a hero. Nobody has ever flown a donkey …

Geek's Guide to Britain
Approaching the museum down a bumpy single track road you start wondering if any of this makes any sense. Why is this museum in the middle of nowhere? Why are the opening hours so peculiar? Why are there bits of aircraft lying around? Why does it have two different names?
All becomes apparent in due course and in the process …

Scriptwriter Stephen Fry has announced he's successfully tackled the thorny problem of just what to call Guy Gibson's dog in Peter Jackson's upcoming remake of The Dam Busters.
The mutt will be rebranded "Digger", Fry announced to the BBC, because "there is no question in America that you could ever have a dog called the N-word …

Monitor
is an occasional column written at the crossroads where the arts, popular culture and technology intersect. Here we look back at the BBC TV movie Micro Men, a retro-tech fan favourite which tells the story of the rivalry between former colleagues Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry, and how the two men kickstarted the British …

Geek's Guide to Britain
Adastral Park is BT’s global research and development centre, one of the world’s most pioneering centres of technology and telecommunications.
Like other visitors to the area, I’ve gazed at the Le Corbusier-inspired building and its iconic tower cube rising out of the surrounding flat Suffolk farmland. It announces its …

Geek's Guide to Britain
The Battle of Britain: it was won by the RAF and pilots in Hurricanes and Spitfires assisted by a new-fangled invention called radar that gave the enemy's position away.
It was the first campaign of the World War II fought entirely in the air and was waged by Germany's Air Force, the Luftwaffe, against the UK's Royal Air Force ( …

The government's crashingly expensive rural broadband deployment project has failed to demonstrate that it represents value for money to Britain's taxpayers, the National Audit Office concluded today in a scathing report.
Just last week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which is steering the Broadband Delivery UK ( …

Obituary
Gerry Anderson, creator of classic children's television shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90, has died at the age of 83.
Anderson, in conjunction with his then-wife Sylvia, pioneered the use of puppets that had solenoid motors built into them to move the eyes and mouth – later dubbed supermarionation. The wires …

Blighty's famous force of Harrier jump-jets, controversially disposed of during last year's defence review along with the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers, have been reprieved: the radical vectored-thrust jets, believed by many to have been the best strike planes in Britain's arsenal, will fly (and almost certainly, fight) again. …

Canada has snapped up a rejected fleet of US presidential helicopters, intending to break up the choppers for spare parts to keep its own search-and-rescue aircraft flying. The British forces may wish they had struck such a deal, as they too operate the "Merlin" copter in large numbers - and they too have severe difficulties in …

Pics
The friendly rivalry between Brit and Oz amateur High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) enthusiasts hit new heights over the weekend when the two nations went head-to-head in a stratospheric clash of high-altitude titans.
Raspberry Pi In The Sky chap Dave Akerman met his Antipodean opponent Mark Jessop in a Cambridgeshire field to …

The UK expects to double its fleet of "Reaper" robot hunter-killer aircraft, according to the machines' manufacturer.
The MQ-9 Reaper drone in flight Better than a Tornado bomber.
General Atomics, which developed the famous Predator drone warplane and its bigger successor the Predator-B/Reaper, announced last week that it is …

¡Bong!
"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had the majority of voting shares as well" -
Motivational poster at Bong Ventures London HQ.
I am dictating this sotto voce from the nerve centre of Operation True Blue at an undisclosed location in Whitehall STOP My assistant มาลัย (which means ' …

Picture special
In just 230 years, humanity has progressed from its first faltering flights to the capability to photograph from space an object the size of a grapefruit - a testament both to technological progress and our need to keep a close eye on the world around us.
The advancement of aerial surveillance and imaging has been driven in …